Human rights lawyer barred from joining US programme

BEIJING: A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer said he was blocked on vague national security grounds from leaving the country to join a US State Departmentsponsored studies programme.

Chen Jiangang said he was pulled aside on Monday at the Beijing airport and told by a customs agent that he was forbidden to leave, but he was given no detailed reasons or a written explanation.

He said he was told in an earlier conversation with Beijing police that it was because he had represented another lawyer, Xie Yang, in an earlier case, and that the US government’s acceptance of him as a visiting scholar also made him suspect.

“Who knows what they are up to in getting you to come to the United States?” Chen said he was told by the officer.

His remarks and a video of him at the airport were posted to an overseas-based dissident website where past such content has consistently been verified.

In the remarks, Chen said he had planned to fly to the United States to study English prior to joining the Humphrey H. Humphrey Fellowship Programme.

The programme “brings young and mid-career professionals from designated countries to the United States for a year of non-degree graduate-level study, leadership development and professional collaboration with US counterparts,” according to its website.

As Xie’s former lawyer, Chen had helped release his client’s account of torture, for which he was himself detained.

Xie was among those scooped up in China’s “7-09 crackdown”, in which authorities on July 9, 2015, detained hundreds of independent lawyers and human rights campaigners in a coordinated sweep that sent a chill through the country’s activist movement.